The maintenance of an intact vascular system requires the interaction of a variety of cells and proteins. Upon injury to the vascular bed, a series of reactions is initiated in order to prevent fluid loss. The initial response is the activation of platelets, which adhere to the wound and undergo a series of reactions. These reactions include the attraction of other platelets to the site, the release of a number of organic compounds and proteins, and the formation of a thrombogenic surface for the activation of the blood coagulation cascade. Through this combined series of reactions, a platelet plug is formed sealing the wound. The platelet plug is stabilized by the formation of fibrin threads around the plug preventing unwanted fluid loss. The platelet plug and fibrin matrix are subsequently slowly dissolved as the wound is repaired. For a general review, see (1).
A critical factor in the arrest of bleeding is the activation of the coagulation cascade in order to stabilize the initial platelet plug. This system consists of over a dozen interacting proteins present in plasma as well as released and/or activated cellular proteins (2, 3). Each step in the cascade involves the activation of a specific inactive (zymogen) form of a protease to the catalytically active form. By international agreement (4), each protein of the cascade has been assigned a Roman numeral designation. The zymogen form of each is represented by the Roman numeral, while the activated form is represented by the Roman numeral followed by a subscript "a". The activated form of the protease at each step of the cascade catalytically activates the protease involved in the subsequent step in the cascade. In this manner a small initial stimulus resulting in the activation of a protein at the beginning of the cascade is catalytically amplified at each step such that the final outcome is the formation of a burst of thrombin, with the resulting thrombin catalyzed conversion of the soluble protein fibrinogen into its insoluble form, fibrin. Fibrin has the property of self-aggregating into threads or fibers which function to stabilize the platelet plug such that the plug is not easily dislodged.
FIG. 1 summarizes the current understanding of the interactions of the proteins involved in blood coagulation. The lack or deficiency of any of the proteins involved in the cascade would result in a blockage of the propagation of the initial stimulus for the production of fibrin. In the middle of the cascade represented in FIG. 1 is a step wherein factor IX.sub.a initiates the conversion of factor X to the activated form, factor X.sub.a. Factor VIII (also synonomously referred to as factor VIIIC) is currently believed to function at this step, in the presence of phospholipid and calcium ions, as a cofactor; that is, it has no known function in itself, and is required to enhance the activity of factor IXa. This step in the cascade is critical since the two most common hemophilia disorders have been determined to be caused by the decreased functioning of either factor VIII (hemophilia A or classic hemophilia) or factor IXa (hemophilia B). Approximately 80 percent of hemophilia disorders are due to a deficiency of factor VIII. The clinical manifestation in both types of disorders are the same: a lack of sufficient fibrin formation required for platelet plug stabilization, resulting in a plug which is easily dislodged with subsequent rebleeding at the site. The relatively high frequency of factor VIII and factor IX deficiency when compared with the other factors in the coagulation cascade is due to their genetic linkage to the X-chromosome. A single defective allele of the gene for factor VIII or factor IX results in hemophilia in males, who have only one copy of the X chromosome. The other coagulation factors are autosomally linked and generally require the presence of two defective alleles to cause a blood coagulation disorder--a much less common event. Thus, hemophilia A and B are by far the most common hereditary blood clotting disorders and they occur nearly exclusively in males.
Several decades ago the mean age of death of hemophiliacs was 20 years or younger. Between the early 1950's and the late 1960's, research into the factor VIII disorder led to the treatment of hemophilia A initially with whole plasma and, later, with concentrates of factor VIII. The only source for human factor VIII has been human plasma. One factor contributing to the expense is the cost associated with obtaining large amounts of usable plasma. Commercial firms must establish donation centers, reimburse donors, and maintain the plasma in a frozen state immediately after donation and through the shipment to the processing plant. The plasma samples are pooled into lots of over 1000 donors and processed. Due to the instability of the factor VIII activity, large losses are associated with the few simple purification procedures utilized to produce the concentrates (resulting in approximately a 15 percent recovery of activity). The resulting pharmaceutical products are highly impure, with a specific activity of 0.5 to 2 factor VIII units per milligram of protein (one unit of factor VIII activity is by definition the activity present in one milliliter of plasma). The estimated purity of factor VIII concentrate is approximately 0.04 percent factor VIII protein by weight. This high impurity level is associated with a variety of serious complications including precipitated protein, hepatitis, and possibly the agent responsible for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. These disadvantages of the factor VIII concentrates are due to the instability of the plasma derived factor VIII, to its low level of purity, and to its derivation from a pool of multiple donors. This means that should one individual out of the thousand donors have, for example, hepatitis, the whole lot would be tainted with the virus. Donors are screened for hepatitis B, but the concentrates are known to contain both hepatitis A and hepatitis non-A non-B. Attempts to produce a product of higher purity result in unacceptably large losses in activity, thereby increasing the cost.
The history of purification of factor VIII illustrates the difficulty in working with this protein. This difficulty is due in large part to the instability and trace amounts of factor VIII contained in whole blood. In the early 1970's, a protein was characterized which was then believed to be factor VIII (5, 6, 7). This protein was determined to be an aggregate of a subunit glycoprotein, the subunit demonstrating a molecular weight of approximately 240,000 daltons as determined by SDS gel electrophoresis. This subunit aggregated into a heterogeneous population of higher molecular weight species ranging from between one million and twenty million daltons. The protein was present in hemophiliac plasma, but missing in plasma of patients with von Willebrand's disease, an autosomally transmitted genetic disorder characterized by a prolonged bleeding time and low levels of factor VIII (8). The theory then proposed was that this high molecular weight protein, termed von Willebrand factor (vWF) or factor VIII related antigen (FVIIIRAg), was responsible for the coagulation defect in both diseases, with the protein being absent in von Willebrand's disease and somehow non-functional in classic hemophilia disease states (9). However, it was later observed that under certain conditions, notably high salt concentrations, the factor VIII activity could be separated from this protein believed responsible for the activity of factor VIII (10-20). Under these conditions, the factor VIII coagulant activity exhibited a molecular weight of 100,000 to 300,000. Since this time, great effort has concentrated on identifying and characterizing the protein(s) responsible for the coagulant activity of factor VIII. However, the availability of but trace amounts of the protein in whole blood coupled with its instability have hampered such studies.
Efforts to isolate factor VIII protein(s) from natural source, both human and animal, in varying states of purity, have been reported (21-27, 79). Because of the above mentioned problems, the possibility exists for the mistaken identification and subsequent cloning and expression of a contaminating protein in a factor VIII preparation rather than the factor VIII protein intended. That this possibility is real is emphasized by the previously mentioned mistaken identification of von Willebrand protein as being the factor VIII coagulant protein. Confusion over the identification of factor VIII-like activity is also a distinct possibility. Either factor X.sub.a or thrombin would cause a shortening of the clotting time of various plasmas, including factor VIII deficient plasma, thereby appearing to exhibit factor VIII-like activity unless the proper controls were performed. Certain cells are also known to produce activities which can function in a manner very similar to that expected of factor VIII (28, 29, 30). The latter reference (30) proves that this factor VIII-like activity is in fact a protein termed tissue factor. The same or similar material has also been purified from human placenta (31). This protein functions, in association with the plasma protein factor VII, at the same step as factor VIII and factor IX.sub.a, resulting in the activation of factor X to factor X.sub.a.
The burden of proof for expression of a recombinant factor VIII would therefore rest on the proof of functional expression of what is unquestionably a factor VIII activity. Even were prior workers to show that they obtained a full or partial clone encoding all or a portion of factor VIII, the technical problems in the expression of a recombinant protein which is four times larger than any other recombinant protein expressed to date could well have proven insurmountable to workers of ordinary skill.